Hey guys, I recently got a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate smartphone. I was previously a BB user, so this is my first android. Anyways, I found that the batteries drain very fast. It doesn't last a whole day and by the time i get off work the batteries are in the red zone and it's from minimal usage as I don't use my phone a lot at work. I've been doing some research on the web and such, but there are so many different answers out there. So I just want to ask anyone here, if they're smartphone users or experts, these questions, and hopefully can help me out.

Here's what I've read:

The batteries will get better with time. Is this true? So since I haven't even had my phone for a full week yet, maybe give it some more time and the batteries will last longer?

Don't keep the phone charging over night because that is actually bad for the battery.

3G uses more battery than Wi-Fi

Let the battery completely drain out and charge it to full. Does this work?

Hey..welcome to the world of Smartphones. First off you need to make some tweaks to all phones to get decent battery usage in my experience....but plan on charging them overnight everyday regardless.

Easy things you can do...
-keep wifi and gps off when you don't need them.
-get apps from market, Advanced Task Killer and Juice Defender.
-one step further if you're willing to root your phone..get Setcpu and create a screen off profile that lowers your cpu frequency...this was a huge gain for me.

Lastly..the coolest thing about Android is all the development that's being done. Get your butt over to XDA Forums and see what's being developed for your phone. I run a custom ROM of Android GB on my phone and it's been highly optimized for performance and battery life. It's like night and day from the Rogers version of the OS that came with the phone.

thanks SWAN for the pointers. i'll be sure to check that out. i'm at work and my phone completely died on me, hence why i started this thread lol.
so you do recommend charging it overnight everyday? because one point of view is that once ur phone is 100% charged its actually bad for the batteries to still keep it plugged in past that point. is there any truth to that?

-Turn GPS off if you don't need it.
- If you know there's no wi-fi signal around or you're on the go, turn it off.
- Reduce your display screen brightness, if its at default setting its way too high and uses up quite a bit of energy
-Reduce the period of time that your phone will stay lit up after touching it

thanks guys, i'll try those out.
also th3answ3r, i heard that with these new lithium batteries (?), theres no need to completely drain the batteries to calibrate it. completely draining them is actually bad
....so which is right?

thanks guys, i'll try those out.
also th3answ3r, i heard that with these new lithium batteries (?), theres no need to completely drain the batteries to calibrate it. completely draining them is actually bad
....so which is right?

Also, don't use those animated wallpapers. They suck the battery like hell.

With the modifications I've made to my phone care of XDA developers I can run GPS all the time, screen brightness at half(which is a lot for my screen) and a decent screen timeout and still have about 60% batt left at the end of the day of solid use.

For your phone there is a lot as well. ROM's are custom versions of Android that are optimized. Kernel development affects how your OS interacts with the device with such features as overclocking for performance and undervolting for batt life. Seems like all that is going on for the Captivate.

there seems to be a lot of different settings for setcpu. what settings are you using?

Mine aren't custom because i"m using a custom kernel which has a new governor called 'interactive' and is overclocked to 1228mhz and underclocked to 128mghz. I also have two profiles set. One for 'screen off' which lowers the cpu to 128-345mghz and uses on-demand governor and one profile for charging which uses 'powersave' governor and 128-192 mghz.

Mine aren't custom because i"m using a custom kernel which has a new governor called 'interactive' and is overclocked to 1228mhz and underclocked to 128mghz. I also have two profiles set. One for 'screen off' which lowers the cpu to 128-345mghz and uses on-demand governor and one profile for charging which uses 'powersave' governor and 128-192 mghz.

Got that? LOL

hahaha, i think i'll be able to figure it out.
but thanks again, you have been very helpful